Horus Aximand
Mourn-it-all; his face is marked by the wounds he suffered during the Battle of Dwell in 008.M31]] Horus "Little Horus" Aximand was the Captain of the 5th Company of the Luna Wolves and later the Sons of Horus Space Marine Legion during the final days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium. He was a native of the Luna Wolves' homeworld of Cthonia. Aximand was often called "Little Horus" for his remarkable physical resemblance to his Primarch Horus, which was a common physical characteristic of those Space Marines who bore the gene-seed organs of the Warmaster. Little Horus was one of the four members of the Luna Wolves' Mournival, the informal advisory council for the Legion composed of the four company captains who were deemed to possess personality traits and experiences that best complemented the Warmaster's command over the Legion and the Great Crusade itself. Little Horus was also member and a strong supporter of the informal warrior lodge that was founded amidst the Luna Wolves and several other Astartes Legions during the Great Crusade after the practice was adopted from the primitive tribes of the Feral World of Davin. This warrior lodge ultimately proved to be one of the channels through which the corruption of Chaos transformed the Sons of Horus into a Traitor Legion of Chaos Space Marines. Horus was wounded in battle against the Nurgleite Eugen Temba by the Chaos relic blade known as the Kinebrach Anathame on the moon of Davin after the Luna Wolves returned to that Chaos-infected planet. Little Horus backed his fellow Mournival member First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon in his determination to deliver the dying Horus into the hands of the Chaos Sorcerers of the Davinite Temple of the Serpent Lodge, a Chaos Cult, after the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus had explained that the priests of the Serpent Lodge might be able to help Horus recover. When Horus was corrupted by Chaos during his "healing" and began to bring the rest of his Legion into the service of the Ruinous Powers in his quest to overthrow his father as the ruler of the galaxy, Little Horus sided with his namesake and Abaddon against his fellow Mournival members Tarik Torgaddon and Garviel Loken who remained Loyalist servants of the Emperor of Mankind, breaking their fellowship. As such, Little Horus willingly turned Traitor and joined in the Traitor Legions' assault on their Loyalist brethren during the Battle of Istvaan III. During the final assault against the Loyalist holdouts on Istvaan III, Little Horus defeated and slew Tarik Torgaddon in single combat in the blasted ruins of that planet's former capital, the Choral City. Horus Aximand also participated in the Drop Site Massacre on the world of Istvaan V, fighting alongside his fellow Sons of Horus Astartes and dominating the battlefield besides Ezekyle Abaddon. Unlike Abaddon, who embraced Chaos willingly, finding it only further empowered a nature that had always been prone to choler, violence and attempts at dominance, Horus Aximand found it more difficult to betray his comrades and the Emperor, but comforted himself by placing all of his faith in the rightness of the Warmaster's actions, who had never failed him before. Yet the death of his Mournival brothers deeply marked Little Horus, and his actions on Istvaan V were characterised by a mechanical, emotionless quality that was quite at odds with his once jovial personality. This behaviour indicated that he had been forced to bury his doubts about the Warmaster and his Legion's actions deep and his own personality even deeper, perhaps in a place from which it could not return. After the Drop Site Massacre, Aximand began to regularly dream, something that was unusual for transhuman Astartes. His dreams usally included a reinterpretation of the day's events like most people, but they were sometimes characterised by the intrusion of a dark, lurking figure who always remained just at the edge of Aximand's awareness, unidentified. After the Drop Site Massacre, Aximand approached First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon about filling the two now-vacant Mournival positions. The two eventually agreed to add Falkus Kibre and Grael Noctua to the group, despite Aximand's unvoiced belief that Kibre would always side with what his senior officers wanted, violating the purpose of the Mournival to offer Horus unvarnished counsel. Aximand placed Grael Noctua on his own company command staff to evaluate him for membership in the Mournival before the Sons of Horus' assault on the Loyalist world of Dwell in 008.M31, an attempt to track down records of how the Emperor of Mankind had gained most of his advanced scientific knowledge and psychic power. Aximand's forces easily defeated the mortal defenders of the Imperial Army who garrisoned the planet until they were shocked to discover that a Loyalist force of Astartes under the command of Shadrak Meduson, the Iron Hands Legion's Tenth Captain, was also on Dwell. Aximand slew Meduson's executive officer, Bion Henricos, and then defended against a surprise assault launched by the White Scars of the disgraced former commander of that Legion's Brotherhood of the Dawn Sky, Hibou Khan. As Sons of Horus reinforcements arrived to save their overwhelmed brethren, Aximand was badly wounded by the strike of a White Scars' Power Sword, which cleaved through his helm and badly disfigured his face. While unconscious in the Sons of Horus medicae undergoing a procedure to reattach the lost tissue, Aximand had another dream in which he finally saw the identity of the hidden, dark figure -- his old friend and fellow Mournival member, Garviel Loken. Aximand found himself relieved, for he believed Loken to have died at Istvaan III and therefore to no longer represent any threat to himself or the Sons of Horus -- he believed the dream was just a troublesome memory. Later, Aximand returned to the fight during the Battle of Dwell, where he was wounded a second time on the world when Shadrak Meduson and his Loyalist Astartes launched an assassination attempt using Fire Raptor gunships against Horus and his fellow Primarchs Mortarion and Fulgrim. The attempt proved unsuccessful, through Horus and Mortarion were wounded, and the Traitor forces completed the devastation of Dwell, leaving the world a smoking ruin as they used the data they had found to move on to their next target, the world of Molech. To his shock, he later encountered a very much alive Garviel Loken aboard the Sons of Horus' own flagship the Vengeful Spirit, where Loken, now a Knight-Errant, had been preparing the way for an infiltration by a force of Space Wolves intended to try and assassinate Horus. Aximand and his forces were successful in defeating the Knights-Errant and dragging Loken before the Warmaster. Though Loken later escaped from the Warmaster's audience chamber, Aximand discovered that the incident had finally, and firmly, erased all his remaining doubts that he had chosen the right path in following the Warmaster -- wherever it might lead. Wargear *''Mourn-it-all'' - A potent Power Sword. See Also *'Mournival' *'Horus' *'Ezekyle Abaddon' *'Garviel Loken' *'Tarik Torgaddon' Sources *''Horus Rising'' (Novel) by Dan Abnett *''False Gods'' (Novel) by Graham McNeill *''Galaxy in Flames'' (Novel) by Ben Counter *''Fulgrim'' (Novel) by Graham McNeill *''Age of Darkness'' (Anthology) edited by Christian Dunn, "Little Horus" by Dan Abnett *''Vengeful Spirit'' (Novel) by Graham McNeill *''The Either'' (Audio Book) by Graham McNeill es:Horus Aximand Category:H Category:A Category:Black Legion Category:Chaos Category:Chaos Characters Category:Chaos Space Marines Category:Characters Category:Imperial Characters Category:Space Marines